University of Virginia Library

While Temperance is practised by all freetraders, Teetotal is preached by almost every advocate of the monopolists. To the latter, anything but the right thing is the one thing needful. Their legislation prohibits hope; and as a rule, scarcely admitting an exception, it may be said that drunkenness is despair. I never met with a teetotalist who could fathom the profundity of their stock argument, “That strong liquors would not be drunk if nobody drank them;” nor with one who could give a good reason why alcohol should not be sold without license, as other poisons are. Few persons take aquafortis in excess; I am a waterdrinker because I find that alcohol is injurious to me; but I am not an interdicter of alcohol to those whom it blesses; and they are many! Even to me, after much toil, a chrystal of it, melted in a calm cup of rest, is a great blessing.